The US Federal Reserve slapped the German lender with a $186 million penalty Wednesday for failing to fix “unsafe and unsound practices” that it pledged to address as long ago as 2015. The Fed found that Deutsche Bank\n \n has made insufficient progress since 2018 to tighten its anti-money laundering controls, improve customer due diligence and ensure compliance with sanctions, among other failures. The Fed had already fined the bank a total of $99 million in 2015 and 2017 over the same issues.
The action highlights that Germany’s biggest lender still has ground to cover in its long-running effort to move on from regulatory breaches — including mis-selling toxic mortgage securities — which have led to more than $10 billion in fines since the 2008 financial crisis. The bank has worked hard to clean up its image and revive its earnings in recent years, launching an $8.3 billion transformation program in 2019, which CEO Christian Sewing billed as a reinvention.